


Meteor Shower

by velocitygrass



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, End of the World, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velocitygrass/pseuds/velocitygrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a meteor shower threatens Earth, a chance meeting in a supermarket aisle causes two men who don't know each other to spend their potentially last hour on Earth together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meteor Shower

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the McSheplets "The end of the world as we know it" challenge.

All flights were canceled, private machines long gone, and the roads were blocked by those trying to flee.

John knew better than to even try with a car, but he wasn't the only one with that idea, so it was impossible to even "borrow" a motorbike, let alone buy one.

His best option—which was more the least bad one—was to stock up on food and pray that his apartment building wouldn't be among the ones that would be destroyed in the meteor shower.

Predictably things didn't look a whole lot better in shops. Someone had broken into the one around the corner of his apartment, so people were walking in, taking what they could carry. Maybe his time would have been better spent looking for supplies sooner rather than trying to hunt down a motorbike.

He grabbed a few cans off the shelf, when he suddenly heard a scream from the next aisle. John peeked around the corner and saw a guy wielding a knife at a group of people who got the last water bottles. The package of the knife was lying on the ground next to the guy, and one look at him told John that he probably had never used such a knife in _any_ capacity, but certainly not as a weapon.

"Why don't you drop that?" John said with authority in his voice, stepping into the aisle.

The guy whirled to him, nearly dropping his knife. He began to sweat, and John hoped that the presence of someone who wasn't intimidated by the sharp blade would convince him to do the right thing. "You don't want to hurt anyone," John said

"There's no more water!" the guy said. "What should I tell my wife and kids?"

"Look, the taps still work fine. You can go home and get as much water as you need and store it. If you cook it, it's gonna be safe for a long time," John said.

The guy hesitated, looking from John to the people clutching the water bottles.

John waited and waited, but the longer the guy kept looking at the bottles, the more John got the feeling that he was only calculating if John was actually going to try to stop him from doing anything stupid.

"Why don't you just go and take some of the other stuff," John said, moving his jacket aside to reveal his sidearm.

The guy's eyes widened, then he dropped the knife and ran.

The others also rushed away; a young woman walked quickly past John with her bottles, thanking him. One guy remained, leaning against the shelf and exhaling. Unfortunately, the shelves weren't built for leaning, so the guy started and slipped, dropping his bottles almost comically, making them roll to the end of the aisle where someone passing by picked them up and walked on without even looking in their direction.

"Shit," the guy said, collapsing in a rather pitiful heap.

"You know, I didn't lie to him. You can really just stock up on tap water. If you do it now, it should be fine."

The man turned his face up and glared at John with rather striking blue eyes. "What if I don't have _access_ to a tap?" he asked acidly.

John frowned. The man was wearing a suit, which was slightly ill-fitting but it looked to be more the result of not knowing how to buy a good suit rather than not being able to afford one.

"I'm here for a conference," the guy said, getting up. It looked pretty laborious, so John offered his hand and pulled him up. "Thank you," the guy said grudgingly.

"What about your hotel?" John asked.

"Shut down. I mean they literally nailed shut every access to it after the third break-in," the guy said. "Cowards."

"Oh," John said. "So where do you plan on going?" he asked.

"I was thinking the park. After the shower hit, they'll start building the emergency accommodations. Of course, if I don't survive this, it won't matter anyway."

John wasn't really sure why, but he wanted to help the guy. His plan was pretty reasonable, and John couldn't offer him safety or anything, but still... "Do you wanna stay with me?" he asked.

The guy's blue eyes widened. His gaze moved to where John had his sidearm for a moment.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," John said. He wasn't going to force his hospitality on someone. "Good luck," he said and turned.

"No, wait," the guy said. "If I have to wait for my death, I'd prefer to do it with a roof over my head."

"That's the spirit," John said, one corner of his mouth tugging slightly up at the face the guy made. "John Sheppard," he said, holding out his hand.

"Rodney McKay," the guy said, taking it.

~~

"I should be with _them_ ," McKay snarled at the TV when the report turned to the few people that had been evacuated. "Top scientists my ass."

John didn't say anything. His brother's family was among those who'd been evacuated.

The report went on, switching between expert interviews and a countdown of the impact.

"God, you need two PhDs to come up with this drivel?" McKay said towards the TV set. "Even a kid can imagine what happens when you drop a stone the size of a football field on someone." His fingers danced around nervously as he spoke, and he started moving his leg up and down rapidly.

"Hey," John said, in a soothing voice, putting his hand on the knee to stop the movement.

McKay's eyes widened, and John quickly removed his hand. "Actually, having sex would be the best distraction I could think of at this moment," McKay said.

John gaped. He hadn't meant— He'd only wanted to calm down McKay.

"Which of course was not your intention," McKay backpedaled. "Oh god. Don't...I mean, sure, if you killed me now, chances are that you'd get away with it. They'd just assume I died in the meteor shower, but—"

"I'm _not_ going to kill you," John said. "I just hadn't. It wasn't meant as an _offer_."

"Of course not," McKay said nervously. His foot started tapping again.

John moved his hand back on his knee, looking at him. McKay's eyes turned back to him, wide and blue. His mouth opened but he didn't say anything. John's gaze dipped to his lips. "Now that you mentioned it, it _would_ be a good distraction."

McKay stared at him for a long moment, then pounced on John.

~~

"I think you killed me," McKay mumbled into the pillow.

John snorted. "And if I haven't, give it"—he checked his alarm clock—"fifteen minutes."

McKay turned his face enough to glare at him. "Way to kill the afterglow."

John grinned. As far as spontaneous fucks with strangers went, this had been one of the best. Actually, he could remove that qualification. Considering that they were literally minutes away from their potential death, it had been pretty fun how McKay had manhandled him. He was a talker and pretty demanding, but John had found his complaints and orders as hot as he'd found his almost reverent praise touching.

"We should probably get dressed. Just in case we don't get crushed but the building catches on fire or something," McKay said, sounding annoyed.

"Might be for the best," John agreed. He sighed, then jumped out of bed and got dressed. When he turned he saw McKay's appreciative glance running down his body.

"If you're hoping for another round before it hits, you're out of luck," John said.

"I know," McKay said, sighing. Then he got out of bed as well.

The reports on TV had footage of the meteor pieces now. Places of impact were calculated, though they only reported on the largest pieces, information about the others scrolling at the bottom of the screen.

John stepped out onto his tiny balcony. It was strange that it all looked so normal. The streets were empty, and he could see faces at windows looking up into the sky, but there were no growing winds or rain that heralded other disasters.

McKay stepped onto the balcony as well, and John lay down on his deck chair, motioning him to sit between his legs. McKay did so reluctantly, leaning back against John.

"I sometimes come out here to read," John said for no particular reason.

He stroked McKay's arms. He lay stiffly on top of John, clearly unable to relax.

"It'll be over in a few minutes," John said, trying to calm him down.

"If we're lucky," McKay said. "We could be hit at just the right distance that the building half collapses, burying us somewhere with broken bodies but still alive long enough to survive in agony until we die of thirst."

John had to laugh despite himself. McKay turned around to glare at him. John managed to stop and make a serious face. "So what do you suggest? That we wait outside?"

"No. There'll be miniscule meteor fragments that might be large enough to kill you if they fall directly on your head, but wouldn't go through several walls. Maybe the cellar would be best, actually. We're not going to be hit by the big parts of the meteor, so preparing against the small ones—if you want to call it that—would be the most reasonable." McKay looked up at the sky, eyes narrowed in worry and mouth slanted downwards, one side more than the other in that particular way of his.

"Well, we wouldn't want to be unreasonable," John said, giving in to the impulse to kiss McKay on his cheek.

McKay gaped, then flushed in an endearing way.

They got up, and John realized that his neighbor had stepped out onto the balcony as well. He was giving John a weird look. John found that he didn't care. He put a hand on McKay's back and led him inside.

~~

They took as much water down as they could carry, along with some snacks. In John's cellar room, they made themselves comfortable on an old blanket that John used to cover the random stuff he kept down here.

"Model airplanes?" McKay said, raising his eyebrows.

"What? They're cool," John said.

"There are better ones out there," McKay said. "I could _build_ you a better one."

"Build me a real one, and I'll fly you anywhere you want," John said, one corner of his mouth turning up.

"A pilot?" McKay asked. "I should have known with the rakish hair and everything."

John smiled as they settled down.

"You know," McKay said quietly, "I really, _really_ hope that we're not going to die from this, but if we are, I couldn't have wished for a better last hour on Earth."

John turned to him, watching his profile. Then he took McKay's hand and only said, "Yeah."

McKay turned to him, and they looked at each other for a long moment.

John wasn't sure if there was any way he could have sensed the actual physical approach of the meteor fragments, but in that moment he thought he _felt_ the impending impact. He leaned forward and kissed McKay.

Then everything went dark.

~~  
~~

John grunted as he lifted the water canister up to fill his coffee machine.

It was one of the last reminders of the meteor shower that directly affected his life. He'd been lucky. He'd only really suffered the short power outage on impact. One of his clients who was getting a pilot's license had died, but other than that his life had returned to normalcy quickly.

Normal was relative, of course. The world, and especially the US, wasn't the same as it was before. The psychological impact of the meteor showers would last for a long time, and nobody could quite predict where it would lead them to.

John opened the fridge, contemplating what to make for his Sunday brunch, when his doorbell rang. He frowned, wondering who would visit him at this time.

When he looked through the spyhole, he recognized McKay on the other side.

John's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't expected to ever see him again.

After they'd managed to feel their way out of the cellar, it had soon become clear that their immediate area was unaffected, and when the hotel had called McKay to inform him that they'd re-opened, John had listened as McKay gave them a piece of his mind with the promise that they'd hear more from him when he came there.

They'd remained silent for a while after McKay hung up, and then Mckay had said, "Well, I should go."

John had nodded and said, "Goodbye. Have a good, you know, life."

"You too," McKay had said.

Then he'd walked away, and John had looked after him until he realized that he was being stupid and should get back upstairs to see how bad the impact of the meteor hits had been elsewhere.

That had been a month ago now.

John had thought about McKay he had to admit. At night, when he jerked off, he sometimes imagined what McKay would be like when John fucked him or blew him or when he blew John. But he thought about him at other times too, imagining his complaints when one of the so-called experts on TV stated the obvious.

He'd _missed_ McKay, even though that was kind of crazy. They'd spent all of three hours with each other. It had been _intense_ three hours, but still it shouldn't have been so hard to get McKay out of his head.

Now it seemed that maybe it had been the same for McKay.

John took a deep breath. His heart was beating a bit faster. He quickly walked to the closest mirror and checked his hair, before opening the door for McKay.

"Hey," McKay said, standing like a deer in headlight until he remembered to breathe. "I, uh, I should be saying that I just was in town, but that would be a lie, and you'd just find out eventually, and I..."

John rescued him by pulling him inside and into his arms, kissing him deeply.

McKay flailed for a moment as he was pulled inside, but then wrapped his arms around John possessively.

They were interrupted, when the coffee machine signaled that it was done. "Uh. That's the coffee," John said.

McKay's eyes lit up at that. "Perfect," he said, walking towards the smell of the coffee.

"So can I invite you to brunch? Haven't decided what I'm doing yet. Anything you'd like?" John asked, following him.

McKay let his gaze run down John's body, and John grinned.

Much later they'd joke to each other about the fact that impending death brought them together and that it would be easy to remember on which day they'd met.

The meteor showers changed many lives in terrible ways. John was well aware that he could count himself extremely lucky. Not only didn't he have to suffer any losses. He found the man that would change his life forever.

For John, _that_ would be the most important impact of the meteor shower that changed the world.


End file.
